Journal of Hebrew Scriptures - Volume 10 (2010) - Review

Joosten, Jan and Jean-Sebastien Rey (eds.), Conservatism
and Innovation in the Hebrew Language of the Hellenistic
Period: Proceedings of a Fourth International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead
Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira (STDJ, 73; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008). Pp. xii+250. Hardcover. US$139.00. ISBN 978-90-04-16404-8.

This volume contains reworked versions of
papers read at the fourth international symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea
Scrolls and Ben Sira held in Strasbourg in May, 2006. The earlier symposia were
held in Leiden in 1995 and 1997, and in Beer-Sheva in 1999. The studies
presented at these symposia investigate the Hebrew language in the time between
Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew. The title of this volume highlights two
characteristics evident in the Hebrew of this period: the retention of
classical Hebrew constructions alongside the emergence of new features, often
of unclear origin.

Moshe Bar-Asher's essay Un groupe de
mots en hébreu biblique et qoumranique: étude semantique opens the
volume. Bar-Asher builds on Carol Newsom's and Devorah Dimant's work on 4Q374,
concentrating on a lexical point regarding the biblical חָגָּא.
Bar-Asher detects echoes of Isa 19:17 (לְחָגָּא)
and Ps 107:2627 (יָחוֹגּוּ and תִתְמוֹגָג).
He takes מחיגה as a word taken from the root חו״ג, which has an original meaning of circular,
twirling movement. Bar-Asher argues that over time, חו״ג and חג״ג
developed a secondary sense
of head-twirling: mental confusion, perplexity. This is
likely how the expression they reeled and staggered like drunkards
in Psalm 107 is to be interpreted: the wisdom of the drunk man has vanished.
The same goes for the noun חָגָּא in Isaiah 19
(from חג״ג) and מחיגה
in 4Q374.

Haim Dihi's essay Amoraic Hebrew in
the Light of Ben Sira's Linguistic Innovations is next. Dihi focuses on
the linguistic innovations common to Ben Sira and Amoraic literature. He finds
major innovations reflecting dynamic linguistic processes behind the words השיגה
,ישינה ,דלות and the verb
תדאיב. Synonyms for most of these were available in
Biblical and Tannaitic Hebrew, so their coinage in Amoraic Hebrew was
unnecessary. Minor innovations include גבהנית
,הכאף ,העריך
,נחכם ,טפשת
,התכלכל. The major innovations appear mainly in
earlier Amoraic texts, as do some of the minor innovations, but rarely in later
texts. On the other hand, most of the minor innovations appear in later texts.
Dihi sees in the new coinages evidence that linguistic changes typical of a
living language were also occurring in Amoraic Hebrew.

The third essay is Mats Eskhult's
Some Aspects of the Verbal System in Qumran Hebrew. Categorizing
the Qumran texts on the basis of genres and text types, he examines the tense,
aspect, and mode (=mood) of Qumran verbs in each of these text types. The
historical prose texts show evidence of development of the verbal system in its
use of verbal forms and particles. The instructional texts do not use weqatal
as the main line of procedural discourse, but rather yiqtol-(we)yiqtol,
and sometimes yiqtol-(we)liqtol. The use of weliqtol in
procedural discourse corresponds to weqatal in Biblical Hebrew, making
the modality of the liqtol evident (like the yiqtol). In the wisdom
texts, 4QInstruction uses weʿāz to an
unprecedented degree, and while 4Q184 initially follows the pattern of verbs
from Proverbs 7, the style changes as the woman's purpose is described using liqtol
clauses.

Next is Steven Fassberg's essay entitled
The Infinitive Absolute as Finite Verb and Standard Literary Hebrew of
the Second Temple Period. Fassberg discusses the use of the infinitive
absolute with conjunctive waw functioning as finite verb, to address the
question, why did the number of occurrences of the infinitive absolute as
a finite verb increase in the late books of the Old Testament at a time when
other uses of the infinitive absolute were disappearing? The books of
Jeremiah and Esther in particular exhibit this use frequently. Fassberg is not
convinced by arguments that this increased use reflects the spoken Hebrew of
that time, since there is no corroborating evidence in contemporaneous
literature. Rather, the use of the infinitive absolute with waw as a
finite verb can better be explained as part of Standard Literary Hebrew,
which combines elements of Hebrew from the First Temple period with others from
the Second Temple period, and which differs from the colloquial language of the
letters, and from the legal language of documentary and Mishnaic texts.

Pierre Van Hecke's essay,
Constituent Order in Existential Clauses examines the order of the
noun phrase and prepositional phrase in Qumran Hebrew existential clauses that
contain these two elements. Van Hecke finds that generally if the prepositional
phrase is nominal, it follows the noun phrase, but if the prepositional phrase
is pronominal, it precedes the noun phrase. He identifies four exceptions to
this rule: (1) when the clause is long or complex, (2) under certain semantic
conditions following Dik's Principle of Iconic Ordering (e.g., with
לאין ,כ
,זולתי ,מבלעדי), (3) if the
referentiality of the constituents is low, and most importantly, (4) when
pragmatic functions such as Contrastive Focus or New Topic are required.

Bo Isaksson writes next, with
Circumstantial Qualifiers in Qumran Hebrew: Reflections on Adjunct
Expressions in The Manual of Discipline (1QS). By circumstantial
qualifiers, Isaksson means any word, phrase or sentence which is
not an obligatory constituent of the main sentence or main sentences (p.
79). After noting some examples in 1QS of yiqtols used as circumstantial
qualifiers to a main clause, he argues that the liqtol is the more
frequent circumstantial qualifier in 1QS, and that this function is not an
innovation in Late Biblical Hebrew, since it is already attested in Judges.

Jan Joosten's contribution is entitled
L'excédent massorétique du livre de Jérémie et l'hébreu
post-classique. Joosten finds many commonalities
between Late Biblical Hebrew and the Hebrew of Qumran and Ben Sira. He finds
the same patterns in certain parts of Jeremiah, specifically in the parts that
are missing in the Septuagint of Jeremiah and are considered additions to an
older text. The post-classical features include the use of the adverb
יומם
as a noun, the preposition
ל
for movement toward a place, the expressions
רבי המלך
and חרי יהודה
, and the feminine
demonstrative זאתה
. Joosten then examines a
passage absent from the Septuagint, Jer 39:1113, and suggests that the passage
was added to harmonize 39:14+14 with 40:16, and to depict Nebuchadnezzar as
the one personally responsible for liberating Jeremiah. The post-classical
features indicate that the additions are likely from a much later time than the
first generation of Jeremiah's disciples, and may in fact come from the
Hellenistic period.

André Lemaire contributes Remarques
sur le vocabulaire hébreu de l'enseignement et de l'étude à Qumrân et dans Ben
Sira, in which he examines the lexical options for education in the
Hebrew of Qumran and Ben Sira. The roots he discusses
are LMD, YRH, ŚKL, BYN, DRŠ, ḤQR, BQŠ, HGH/Y, YSR, and
PŠR. Lemaire finds that although some of the words are taken from biblical
Hebrew, especially Late Biblical Hebrew, certain innovations also appear. Some
of these innovations are new vocabulary (e.g., talmûd, mbynh), and some
are phrases (spr hhgy, rz nhyh, dwrš htwrh, byt htwrh, mdrš htwrh).
Lemaire suggests the abundance of these roots in the form of present
participles used as nouns indicates the importance of educational activity at
Qumran.

In The Morphosyntax of the
Construct Phrase in Qumran Hebrew, Takamitsu Muraoka investigates the
fact that the logico-semantic relationship is expressed by this
dependence structure in which one nominal is logico-semantically dependent on
the immediately following nominal (p. 125). Muraoka classifies the
relationships expressed in 1QpHab, 1QS iiii, and 1QHa ixx into the
following categories: Origin, Quality, Possessive, Partitive, Topical,
Relational, Locational, Objective, Membership, Representation, Purpose or
benefit, Appositional, Action, Condition, Material, Instrument, Time-span,
Experience, Content, Pertinence, and Property, concluding with a few
unexplained problem cases.

Wido van Peursen next writes on The
Word תחליף
in Ben Sira, a new
word initially understood as successor. Van Peursen sees the notion
of substitution in other words derived from the root
חלף
, and from cognates in Aramaic. He cautions against concluding
anything about the meaning of תחליף
based on its noun
pattern, which most likely is the Piel. The word תחליף
occurs in Ben Sira in
48:8; 44:17; and 46:12. In 48:8, the notion of successor fits the context, the
biblical parallels, and the Septuagint's διάδοχος. In 44:17, Noah is not so much the successor as a
shoot that comes up from the stump of humanity, a sense based on
the use of חלף
in the Bible. In 46:12,
either meaning (shoot, offspring or substitute) is
possible, with the former supported by parallels with other blessing formulae.

Elisha Qimron contributes an essay entitled The Type וָאֶבְנֶה
in the Hebrew of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, addressing the question why the forms of the conversive
imperfect differ in length between the first person and the second/third
persons. Qimron notes the prevalence of apocopated forms in the Pentateuch, but
of non-apocopated forms in the early historical books and the late biblical
books of the Bible (Isaiah to Job exhibit no preference for one form over the
other). The Dead Sea Scrolls and Samaritan Pentateuch use only the
non-apocopated forms, confirming Bergsträsser's suggestion that the distinction
is by analogy to the modal system. Qimron argues that the forms in Qumran
Hebrew represent not an imitation of Biblical Hebrew but rather the last stage
in this analogical development. Because of the similarity with Samaritan
Hebrew, Qimron insists that these forms are not artificial but were a
progressing phenomenon.

Jean-Sebastien Rey compares 4QInstruction to
Ben Sira, in Quelques particularités linguistiques communes à
4QInstruction et à Ben Sira. He discusses three
constructions in both that are similar to but unparalleled in Late Biblical
Hebrew. The first is the formula אל
תקטול, which in both authors appears much more
frequently than לא
תקטול,
with no difference in meaning, often in clause non-initial position, but often
followed by פן, although פן
is rare in Late Biblical
Hebrew. The second common construction is the rare use of
למה
for פן. The third is the use of
the suffixed pronoun to express a reflexive sense. Rey argues that although the
similarities do not demonstrate a common author, they indicate the two writings
may come from a similar sapiential school, but the evidence is not sufficiently
conclusive; the similarities may simply be due to a common literary genre.

Stefan Schorch's essay is on Spoken
Hebrew of the Late Second Temple Period according to Oral and Written Samaritan
Tradition. Schorch argues on the basis of the use of the internal
passive, dual, and the article, that Samaritan Hebrew should be considered not
a later form of the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic text, but should be
considered a Hebrew dialect of its own. Differences in the generic use of the
article and the inflection of לילה
cannot be explained as a
chronological development of the same dialect, but they reflect a different
dialect from Tiberian Hebrew and from Mishnaic Hebrew. Schorch further argues
that the consonants of the Samaritan Pentateuch are from the 2nd century BCE,
and that the oral and written tradition are one linguistic corpus, although the
oral tradition has since then assimilated [t] in the hitpael and
nasalized long vowels in final syllables.

David Talshir and Zipora Talshir
contribute an article entitled
כן
נאמן לן עם
בתולה
(Ben Sira 20,4; 30,20) Meaning and
Transmission, questioning text critics' tendency to relocate this line
from 30:20 of Ms B to chapter 20, privileging the versions over the Hebrew
manuscripts. Rather, they demonstrate that the long Hebrew version accounts for
the text of the Greek and Syriac versions. They argue that
נאמן
means not a eunuch but a trustworthy person
appointed to guard the bride, according to an ancient practice in which
the best-man shared the bridal room as a witness to the bride's claim of
virginity (p. 223). In two appendices, they also question whether the
right of the first night was ever practiced, and argue that
duplicated verses in Ben Sira are not from the translators but from the sage
using similar wording for the benefit of various contexts.

Finally, Alexey (Eliyahu) Yuditsky's
essay, The Weak Consonants in the Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls and in
the Hexapla Transliterations concludes the collection. Yudutsky compares
the glides and gutturals in the Dead Sea Scrolls with those in the transliteration
of the Hexapla. The glides weaken in the two traditions similarly, but the
absence of anaptycic vowels (except after [e]) indicates the gutturals were
weakened in the Scrolls but stable in the Hexapla.

In a collection of this type, one can
expect some disparity in topics. Yet some of the articles, such as those by
Fassberg and Joosten complement each other well. Fassberg found that the book
with the most infinitive absolutes used as a finite verb is Jeremiah. In light
of Joosten's dating of the secondary additions to Jeremiah, it would be
interesting to see how many of those infinitive absolutes occurred in the
additions from the second century.

The volume concludes with three helpful
indices: an Index of Texts, Index of Semitic Words and
Phrases, and an Index of Modern Authors. Although a few
typographical errors escaped the careful eyes of the editors of this technical
volume, this collection represents the best of current scholarship on the
Hebrew language between the Bible and the Mishnah. None of these essays will
disappoint those who share a passion for the Hebrew
language and for the Second Temple period.